Show Summary

A little known secret of many ‘experts’ is a big part of they way that they became experts in their field was to essentially assume the role. It’s also much easier to become an expert in any given area by adding value to others, as karma is alive and well. Todd Hutcheson tells us more in this FlipNerd.com Flip Show. Todd also shares great advice on generating seller leads via direct mail and the internet.

Highlights of this show

  • Meet Todd Hutcheson, Founder of iBuyHomes.com.
  • Learn the importance of positioning yourself as an expert, to help build your business.
  • Learn some of Todd’s direct mail tips, and how to improve your lead generation.

Resources and Links from this show:

Listen to the Audio Version of this Episode

FlipNerd Show Transcript:

Announcer: Welcome to the FlipNerd.com Podcast. This is your host, Mike Hambright and on this show, I will introduce you to V.I.P.’s in the real estate investing industry as well as other interesting entrepreneurs whose stories and experiences can help you take your business to the next level. We have three new shows each week which are available in the iTunes store, or by visiting FlipNerd.com. So without further ado, let’s get started.

Mike Hambright: Hey it’s Mike Hambright with FlipNerd.com. Welcome back for another exciting V.I.P. interview where I interview some of the most successful real estate investing experts and entrepreneurs in the industry to help you learn and grow. Today I’m joined by Todd Hutchinson who is the owner of IBuyHomes.com and a real estate investor that focuses primarily on the Orlando and Greensborough markets and maybe some more. We’ll talk about that. Today we’re going to focus on two general things. The first one is generating leads for your business with direct mail and through the internet which Todd is an expert at. Another thing that we haven’t really talked about that I’m excited to talk about is how to position yourself as an expert in your market. It’s going to be an exciting show. Before we get started though, let’s take a moment to recognize our featured sponsors.

Advertisement: RealtyMogul.com is an online market place for real estate investing, connecting borrowers and capital from accredited and institutional investors. Get a rehab loan fast and close in as little as 10 days. Rates start as low as 9%.

We’d also like to thank National Real Estate Insurance Group, the nation’s leading provider of insurance to the residential real estate investor market. From individual properties to large scale investors, National Real Estate Insurance Group is ready to serve you.

Please note, the views and opinions expressed by the individuals in this program do not necessarily reflect those of FlipNerd.com or any of its partners, advertisers or affiliates. Please consult professionals before making any investment or tax decisions as real estate investing can be risky.

Mike Hambright: Hey, Todd. Welcome to the show.

Todd Hutchinson: Thank you for having me.

Mike Hambright: Thanks for being on it and before we get started, I wanted to tell everybody that you followed our rules and you wore the glasses today.

Todd Hutchinson: Yes, I did.

Mike Hambright: Prepared for FlipNerd. The Wayfarers are coming back, my friend.

Todd Hutchinson: They are good looking glasses. I get complimented on them.

Mike Hambright: Good, good. Well, thanks again for being here. We have some really great topics to talk about today and I’m glad that you’re going to share your insights on those. Before we get started though, can you tell us a little bit about your background in real estate investing and kind of how you got into this and a little bit of background on your companies?

Todd Hutchinson: Okay, great. I’m from Florida. One of the ten native Floridians. I was a political consultant for many, many years and sold political direct mail. I was looking for something to do in between political campaigns and I had an option to buy a sign shop. One day this guy came in and said, “You need to come to our real estate meeting. We’re all the guys who buy all of the “We Buy Houses” signs.” I said, “Okay”, and I fell in love with it instantly. My mom had done some real estate. Maybe one or two a year and if she’d had a REA and she had known about it, she’d have been filthy rich doing it.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: So I joined the REA and I bought IbuyHomes.com the next month.

Mike Hambright: Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: My first deal… The guy I bought .com, .net and .org for $1,500. He let me put $500 down at $100 a month until I paid it off.

Mike Hambright: Okay, and what year was that?

Todd Hutchinson: That was 2000.

Mike Hambright: Okay. That was just shortly after Al Gore invented the internet.

Todd Hutchinson: Exactly.

Mike Hambright: Not too long after that.

Todd Hutchinson: Not too long at all and things have changed a lot, obviously.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: So I’ve been up on the internet since 2000. It’s been a fun ride. I didn’t end up buying the sign shop and got into this full time almost from the start.

Mike Hambright: Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: I still do a tiny, tiny bit of political consulting. More because it’s in my blood than anything and I’m a full time investor since 2004.

Mike Hambright: Yeah. So since you’ve been investing for ten to fifteen years about, in Florida, you’ve seen some wild rides. It’s been a little bit of a roller coaster, huh.

Todd Hutchinson: It’s been crazy, you know. It was flat when I first started. Then there was a meteoric rise. Then to give you an example of the fall we had, I had one house I sold to a guy for one ten. He put thirty into it. Had an offer for one sixty-seven. This was in 2008. He turned it down. That house is now worth about $42 thousand.

Mike Hambright: Wow.

Todd Hutchinson: It’s been sitting empty for that entire time. It goes to show that many, many times the best offer is your first offer. You shouldn’t try to negotiate too hard as long as you’re going to make good money. I bet he would have loved to have had that person right now.

Mike Hambright: Yeah, that’s incredible.

Todd Hutchinson: So things fell pretty dramatically and then they’re screaming right now.

Mike Hambright: Right.

Todd Hutchinson: Central Florida and Florida in general is very, very hot. Californians are buying. Brazilians, Canadians and people who just think Florida is still on sale, because it is.

Mike Hambright: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So there are some great topics to talk about today. Why don’t we start with talking about some of the lead generation stuff that you’re proficient in and that you’ve agreed to share some of your knowledge in today? If you want, maybe we’ll just talk about direct mail. The interesting thing is… I’m guessing here that some of the benefits you saw here as a real estate investor was because you had been doing this in the political space prior to that. Is that right?

Todd Hutchinson: Well, I did all of the mail for Disney for four years. So direct mail… I was on the Board of Directors for the Direct Marketing Association.

Mike Hambright: Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: It’s a big part of my business.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: I did political mail, but I did some non-profit mail and Disney and Hilton Grand Vacations. We have a lot of time-share industry here.

Mike Hambright: Right.

Todd Hutchinson: So I did a lot of time-share direct mail.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pieces a week.

Mike Hambright: Right, right.

Todd Hutchinson: So our little one thousand pieces or two thousand pieces seem really small compared to what I was doing.

Mike Hambright: Yeah, but there’s definitely some art and some science to direct mail and I think for a long time that people thought that the art was just volume. Just send a bunch, but there is clearly, with so much noise in the world these days, there is an art to something that converts well.

Todd Hutchinson: Well what people don’t concentrate enough on in direct mail is the list. About 50%-60% of success of a direct mail campaign is the list. About 20%-30% of the success of a campaign is the offer. Then about 10%-15% of the success of a campaign is the actual creative. What your letter says and how it looks.

Mike Hambright: Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: So people like to concentrate on the small things that they shouldn’t be concentrating on, when you should be concentrating on the list.

Mike Hambright: Yeah, okay.

Todd Hutchinson: The list that I love… The biggest one that I love is evictions. I don’t know if you’ve ever had anyone talk about eviction mailings, but in Florida anyway, it’s a legal action. When somebody doesn’t pay the rent, they go down and pay $195 and it’s in the court records. The owner’s name and the address of the house that they are evicting. So you go on a daily or weekly basis and get that list and compile it then mail it to them. I know people where that’s all they do is that list.

Mike Hambright: Oh, okay.

Todd Hutchinson: The trick is to try to get in the mail the very first person and then probably about ten days later, at least in our state, we have what’s called a Writ of Possession. If the tenant doesn’t leave you have to go back to the court and ask for the court to give you permission to throw their stuff out on them.

Mike Hambright: Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: So you want to mail a piece the very first day they file the action and then follow-up. If the tenant hasn’t left and they have to ask for that Writ of Possession, you want a second piece of mail to go out that day as well.

Mike Hambright: Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: That’s when the tenant goes with the sheriff and can literally throw it out. If you get a mail piece in the owner’s hands that next day, they’ve just walked into a trashed house, and you’re going to get some really, really, really good leads.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: They’re not on the market. Nobody else knows about them.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: That’s what we want.

Mike Hambright: Right, right.

Todd Hutchinson: It’s all about timing.

Mike Hambright: Alright. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, that’s your favorite list. Is there any other words of wisdom on direct mail?

Todd Hutchinson: My second favorite list is probate.

Mike Hambright: Hmm.

Todd Hutchinson: Again, in my opinion, do not start probate mailings… If you do one and then stop mailing, you’re most likely going to fail. You have to do it at least… In my mom’s case, let me give you an example. My mom died and her probate lasted two years before we could sell any of the property.

Mike Hambright: Wow.

Todd Hutchinson: So you have to, at a minimum, every six weeks, as long as the probate has started and there is an asset in the probate file for you to mail to, you need to be on a six week mailing schedule for them because you never know when they are going to become motivated.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: So you mail to the personal representative. In some states it is called the executor. Here in Florida it is public record, where the personal representative lives. Their name, their address and sometimes their phone number, even. So you mail to them every six weeks. It’s tricky because you’ll get calls. You’re an ambulance chaser, but you have to acknowledge the death and it’s usually a loved one. The case file will show you whether it’s a loved one or not in the relationship and that’s important to mark on your filing somehow so you don’t say it’s your loved one if it was their accountant. So you can send the right message to the right list if you want to [inaudible 10:50] that.

Mike Hambright: Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: So probate is my second favorite. The reason both of those are really good, in my opinion, is they’re not easy to get [inaudible 10:58]. So not enough people do them because you have to go to the courthouse on a regular basis. If not daily, then weekly, to get the most timely information. There are people that sell probate information, but in my opinion, when I’ve tested them out, it’s old. It’s old data, whereas if you compile the list yourself at the courthouse, it’s fresh and it is accurate.

Mike Hambright: Yeah. I know in some parts of the country the data is much easier to get than in others. I know in some parts of the north east, it’s very, very difficult if you’re not a family member, to get probate. So I know a little bit about it and I know that to be true. It depends on where you are in the country as to how easy it is to get to that data.

Todd Hutchinson: Right. Then my third favorite and the one I do the least of is out of town owners.

Mike Hambright: I see.

Todd Hutchinson: Now, I think you’ve had it on your show before, list source. You can actually pull the list by whether they have equity or not. Not only just… Again, the list is important, because we buyers, why would we mail to somebody who owes more than we can pay? So your response rate goes up and your costs go down dramatically if you segregate that list out, not only by out of town owners, but secondarily, by how much equity they have.

Mike Hambright: Right, right. Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: Have you used List Source before?

Mike Hambright: I’m familiar with it, yes.

Todd Hutchinson: Okay. It’s a pretty robust system. It’s owned by a title company. National Title Company.

Mike Hambright: Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: So the data is good.

Mike Hambright: Yeah, yeah. So tell us a little bit about internet leads. I know, obviously you own iBuyHouses.com and…

Todd Hutchinson: Homes.

Mike Hambright: I’m sorry. IBuyHomes.com. I know that in some of the conversations we just had, that you are very confident in your ability to generate leads on the internet so share some of your tips and tricks in that regard.

Todd Hutchinson: Okay. The first thing is, if you don’t have an internet site yet, and I think this is really, really important, don’t go register a domain. Go buy a domain already old that already has links to it. You can do that at GoDaddy.com and then auctions. They have an auctions site. You can do what is called an Advanced Search and you can pull up domains that have expired that are $5.00 that are three years old and already have traffic to them. For instance, there was a great one three days ago. It might still be available. WeBuyTXHouses.com. It was three years old and was getting 30 hits a month. It’s a lot easier to get that site ranked than it is if you buy one that has never had any information on it and hasn’t been purchased. So if you don’t have a site, don’t buy a brand new one. Spend the time. Buy one that has already been used. It’s a lot easier to get ranked. That’s number one.

Mike Hambright: Yep.

Todd Hutchinson: Number two, if you’re name is Jane and you’re going to buy JaneBuysHouses.com, don’t get that unless you can get the corresponding, JaneBuysHomes.com and point one to the other. We had a guy here in town that sent out twenty thousand letters a month and he had a certain domain name and I told him twice. I said, “Look, you need to register the other domain.” He owned the houses and didn’t own the homes. I told him, “Look, if you don’t register, I’m going to register it and point it to my domain”, and I did. I used to get one to two leads a month for an $8.00 investment. So the trick is if you see somebody in your market that is doing a lot of advertising and they have houses and they don’t have homes or vice versa, go register it and point it to your site. Instant traffic.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: Instant traffic.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: Because people don’t do that.

Mike Hambright: It’s funny you say that because in another life I worked for a fairly successful start-up. It was a start-up, but they were doing nearly a half a million dollars in sales at the time I was there so it was pretty successful. We bought all sorts of domains. They called them fat finger domains. They were just a variation of other domains that somebody would mistype by one word or a common word that would commonly get spelled wrong and that was like a strategy of the company. It was to buy those domains that were just slightly different than something that we did want to target.

Todd Hutchinson: Well, for two years I was number one ranked on REAMAZ and REAMAC. So the Z, the X and C. People just typed it in wrong all of the time. I was getting about 500 hits a month before Google finally changed the algorithm to correct your searches, “Did you mean this?”

Mike Hambright: Yeah, yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: So, that was a fun little thing that went away that got a lot of good traffic.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: The thing that most people do when their internet sites… I see so many really, really bad websites. They talk about themselves instead of what’s in it for the customer.

Mike Hambright: Right.

Todd Hutchinson: If you don’t have your website so that it pulls up and instantaneously they can tell what the website is about and what is in it for them, they are going to bounce and go somewhere else. So my opinion is not, I Buy Homes, We Buy Houses. It’s No Closing Cost For You. You pick the closing date. You don’t have to paint, clean or make repairs. What is in it for them? Not, what is in it for you?

Mike Hambright: Right.

Todd Hutchinson: So many, many people fail in that aspect. Even if they get somebody to come into their site, they are going to leave, because it’s not professionally done.

Mike Hambright: Right.

Todd Hutchinson: Number two is, and this is a technical thing, but it’s almost impossible to get a site ranked unless you have H1 Tags. H1 stands for headline. Think of H1 tag as a headline. The way you can figure out if you have them. You right click on any white space on your website and hit view source. Then just hit CTRL + F and type H1. Then it will tell you what your headline tag is. Many people’s say, “Click Here” or the name of their company. Jones Investment Companies. You don’t want to rank for Jones Investment Companies. You want to rank for “Sell My Dallas Fort Worth Home Fast For Cash”.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: So you need whatever words you’re trying to rank on to be in your H1 Tag. A really cool thing is, the last thing on your page should be an H2 Tag with similar words. So if you used “Sell your home fast in Dallas” for H1, you would want your H2 at the bottom of your page to say, “Sell my home quickly for cash.” So semantically it’s the same thing, but not exactly the same thing. So Google will notice that both of these H1 and H2 tags… The H1 and H2 tells Google what the page is about and what they should rank it for.

Mike Hambright: Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: Another really, really good trick… I promise this is really worth a lot of money and I’ve never really told it to anybody, but I’m going to be generous.

Mike Hambright: Yes, thank you.

Todd Hutchinson: You do not have to be ranked in the top three for your terms if you do this one thing. If you add your phone number in the first 20 characters of your description, people will call you. Because what do people use the internet for? They use it for the yellow pages, right? So if you have your phone number in your description so that when they see those ten different listings for sell your house in Dallas and you’re the only one that has a phone number in it, you’re going to get called even if you’re not ranked number one and two where most of the traffic is from. So you can be three, four or five if you have your phone number. Just check it out in your market. Type in “We Buy Houses Detroit” and see. There is nobody that will have their phone number in there. I promise you.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: I get a whole lot of business because of that because nobody else puts their phone number. So you don’t even ever have to click on it. They can just call without ever having to click. I think that’s a really cool thing, but you have to be able to answer your phone.

Mike Hambright: Yeah. The interesting thing is I know a lot of real estate investors and a lot of people that teach real estate investors to do a lot of things and it’s the last thing that they want to do, is answer the phone. Send it to voicemail. If they’re motivated they’ll leave a voice message. It’s like, I think if they’re motivated, they’re going to hang up and call the next person until they get somebody that answers the phone. In fact, I do it all the time. I could give examples. I’ve used this one before, so I’ll say it again. We made a decision that we were going to have somebody else come and hang Christmas lights at our house because I’m not going to do that and I literally just kept calling people until somebody answered the phone and it was like the fifth or sixth person. We roughly agreed on a price and he could come out and do it the next day and all these things. I was like, I’m done; you’re the guy to come do it. Then people started calling back over the next few hours saying, “Well, you just called us two hours ago.” I was like, “Well, I had a problem to solve and I solved it.”

Todd Hutchinson: Another cool tip is if you want to do pay per click ads on Google, only run your ad from 7:00 – 10:00 and answer your phone. Put in your ad that you’re open now for calls. You’ll have more business than you’re going to know what to do with.

Mike Hambright: Yeah, interesting. Interesting.

Todd Hutchinson: People generally look after they get home and Monday is the best time. No question about it. My Monday and Tuesday traffic… They’ve gone through the weekend and they haven’t sold their house and they get frustrated. So if you only want to do pay per click ads on Monday and Tuesday, those are the most motivated sellers. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it.

Mike Hambright: Wow, that’s interesting. Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: So you want to have H1 Tag. You want to have a title tag. Title tag is what’s up in the blue bar at the top if you don’t know. Most people make the mistake of putting their company name there versus whatever you’re trying to key in on. So think of it as real estate. It’s prime real estate. You want your keywords there. Sell Orlando home fast. Okay? You can always rank your company name easily. Nobody else is trying to rank for that name, so don’t use your space to promote your company name. It doesn’t do you any good.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: The other thing that’s recently changed with Google is they are giving preferential treatment for a few things that they didn’t in the past. It’s good to have at least 2 thousand words on each page. So many people just have two small things, but 2 thousand words is generally considered the minimum of what you should have now to have the optimal chance of getting ranked well in Google.

Mike Hambright: Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: Google loves video. They own YouTube. I can’t tell you how many times people call me and I hear my voice in the background. It’s really weird.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: I paid a guy $30. I got a tie on and I made a really, really simple video explaining the process. I literally hear people calling me and I hear my voice in the background because they’ve watched my video to hear what it’s about.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: I don’t know about you, but is this real? People call me and say, “Do you really buy houses?” It’s not believable to somebody who doesn’t do it all the time.

Mike Hambright: Right.

Todd Hutchinson: So you have to create trust. I think the video on the site, lets them know it’s a real person. I hate these videos that are not you. I want it to be you, so they know that when they call and you answer the phone, they already feel like they know you.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: Does that makes sense?

Mike Hambright: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Todd Hutchinson: So I’m really big on the video. I think it helps you give credibility.

Mike Hambright: Along those lines, we’re talking about becoming an expert in your market and I know you have some great tips on that. I think along those same lines of what you just said, people like to do business with people, not a voice that somebody hired on Fiver to sound like somebody else or whatever. Why don’t you share some of your advice, because we haven’t really talked about this in the past, and I think it’s important for people to…? I don’t think enough real estate investors focus on their image and how to improve the image of the industry which is tarnished in many ways. With that said, one, it’s easy to stand out if you’re a professional and you focus on building your reputation. Two, I just think it helps the whole industry. Go ahead and share your thoughts on how to position yourself as an expert.

Todd Hutchinson: I think it’s really, really important. I’m not the biggest wholesaler in Orlando by any stretch of the imagination. Not even close, but for most of those people in the REA, especially the newbies, they probably think I am because I go and talk to my local REA and I give classes on wholesale. In my particular case I chose to become an expert on wholesaling. There is a guy in my REA club that specializes on SECO [SP] homes. Something we have unique here in Florida as many places don’t. It’s hard to fix them. It’s hard to sell them and he has buyers who will buy them, not fix them and just rent them out. So you can get them for ten cents on the dollar. You sell them for twenty cents on the dollar and they just rent them. They don’t even get insurance. So he gets probably four deals a year off of just becoming the expert on SECO [SP] homes. In my particular case, I get investors and in many, many cases it’s newbies, but not always, where other investors don’t know what to do. Because I’ve put myself out there as the expert and I’ll help you on wholesaling, they’ll call me and we’ll work the deal together. Sometimes they’ll just assign it to me and sometimes we’ll just co-wholesale it. I get an enormous amount of business. Probably 80% of my business is from other investors at a REA, either buying or selling. It’s both.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: 80% of my business is because I go to all of the meetings, I get up and speak, I tell people what I want and I tell them what I can offer them. One cool thing that I do that nobody or that I’ve never heard anybody else say, but that doesn’t mean that everybody’s not doing it… I get up and I announce in my local meeting that I’ll send your lead to my list for $29 bucks. I have a pretty big list and they know that. So $29 seems great for them to not have to go out and build a buyer’s list and build one that’s 15 years old. It’s a lead source because they call me and I say, “I’ll buy it.”

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: They call me before they try to flip it themselves or if they only have 10 people in their e-mail list, I know I can sell it quickly. It’s just a really good source.

Mike Hambright: Yeah, that’s interesting.

Todd Hutchinson: So becoming an expert… I think I’ve told you that I have a friend who’s an expert in fire damage houses. The other expert things you can become in your market in my opinion are, you can become the REO specialist. You can become the short-sale expert. That’s something I don’t like to do. So if I get a short-sale, I sell the lead to somebody else.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: It can take 14 months and that’s just not in my personality.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: Become an expert in short-sales. Become an expert in probate. Become an expert and somebody that people can go to in your local market and you will get deals. There’s just no ifs, ands or buts about it.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: It has paid off tremendously for me.

Mike Hambright: That’s great and a big part of what you’re saying… Kind of the underlying advice you’re giving is to try and give back to people. I think there are so many people in this industry that haven’t gotten out of the gate or that are really interest and I think if you can help them accomplish what it is they’re trying to accomplish, then I believe in Karma. I know it’s alive and well and that stuff comes back around. There are people that have helped me through different periods of my life and I’ll never forget and they know that if they need anything from me, I’ll be there for them just because of something they did ten or twenty years ago. So who knows?

Todd Hutchinson: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Mike Hambright: That’s great. In terms of… I know you’re really… We’ve talked a lot about REA’s and being active in your REA which we are huge proponents of REA clubs here. We’re big fans of REA clubs all across the country. Any other ways to position yourself publically outside of a REA? Any advice on that?

Todd Hutchinson: One thing that I did that was very, very successful was I called every reporter. The local TV reporters and I offered stories. I had a TV reporter do a story about We Buy Houses signs. How they were ugly and she wanted me to comment on them. She used my sign and she thought it was a negative, but they put my iBuyHomes.com sign and they ran it for three days and it was on their website.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: So I call reporters. If I see a newspaper article, I’ll call them and say, “I’m a real estate investor. If you ever need a quote, you can call me up to 10 o’clock at night” and that’s what’s important to them. To be able to get in touch with you really, really quickly.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: There’s a really cool site called “Help a Reporter Out”.

Mike Hambright: Okay.

Todd Hutchinson: Have you ever heard of that?

Mike Hambright: I don’t know. It sounds somewhat familiar. I don’t think I’ve ever been there before. I may have seen it.

Todd Hutchinson: They will send, twice a day, e-mail messages on all types of issues where reporters are looking to interview experts. I got in Personal Investor Magazine because they did a request for a wholesaler. It was really cool. I got a whole page in Personal Investor Magazine. Not a whole page, but half a page. I talked about my company and talked about me all because I gave myself up as an expert.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: I like to do things nobody else is doing.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: There’s not anybody else in your market calling TV reporters and newspaper reporters and saying if you need a comment, I’d love to comment.

Mike Hambright: Yeah, that’s interesting.

Todd Hutchinson: At least in all of the papers that I’ve seen in Florida, the person that they go to when they want to talk about real estate, is the local head of the board of realtors. That’s because they don’t know people like us that are professional. I can wear a tie and get dressed up to go on camera. But if you call them and tell them, you’re going to get interviewed. There’s just no question about it.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: Think about having a link on your newspaper site how much that would help your website.

Mike Hambright: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Todd Hutchinson: If you had that link from that site.

Mike Hambright: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Todd, unfortunately we’re about out of time. We could probably carry on with this for a while. Any last words of wisdom on positioning yourself as an expert in your market?

Todd Hutchinson: Just make sure you toot your own horn. Tell people how good you are and tell them often because they won’t remember if you don’t continue to tell them and smile.

Mike Hambright: Yeah.

Todd Hutchinson: Smile and have fun. Be nice to people and tell them you’re the expert.

Mike Hambright: Yeah, that sounds like advice from a former political consultant.

Todd Hutchinson: Absolutely.

Mike Hambright: Awesome, Todd. Well thanks so much for sharing all of this great information. This is good stuff. We appreciate you being here today.

Todd Hutchinson: Thank you for having me.

Mike Hambright: Alright. Stay in touch my friend.

Todd Hutchinson: Have a good day.

Mike Hambright: You too.

Announcer: Thanks for joining us on today’s FlipNerd.com Podcast. To listen to more of our shows and hear from incredible guests, please access all of our podcasts in the iTunes store. You can also watch the video version of our shows by visiting us at FlipNerd.com.

 

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